Korea at the Crossroads: the Switzerland of Asia

I just came back from listening to Kichan Bae, Secretary to the President for the Northeast Asian Cooperative Initiative, talk about his book called "Korea at the Crossoroads."

He had several images in his book that were interesting - one was a map of China's projected sphere of influence (as predicted by Brezinski) in the 21st century. It was extended to cover Southeast Asia, Korea, and parts of Russia and the Middle East. I agree with Mr. Bae that China is the biggest competitor for U.S. in power and influence in this region.

Korea's in a unique position in that it is in the center of global powers: Russia, China, Japan, and the U.S. in spirit... much like Switzerland's position in Europe during the 19th century. Of course, Switzerland has the advantage of its landscape to shield it from foreign invasion while Korea doesn't, but both countries have the advantage as a neutral state to help relations around it. Mr. Bae sees this as Korea's role in the future.

Korea's duty, according to Mr. Bae, is to become closer with China since China's power is rising, but because this will pose a threat to the U.S., it must also become closer with Japan. Of course, with the instability of North Korea, the question of reunification and lasting peace on the peninsula is uncertain. Kim Jung Il has no heir, and the country is becoming more and more unstable.

One person in the audience asked a question about the possibility of forming an Asian Union much like the European Union. I thought this was pretty funny in how utterly ridiculous it was - there's absolutely no way that a multinational union will fly in Asia and it's overly optimistic to even toy with the idea. Firstly regarding physical size, the European Union even had challenges of integrating all the nations because of disparities in currency/economies/cultures... Asia would be even harder, since we have vast powerful countries that are doing much better on their own than they would if they all had to answer to one government.

I like the analogy of Korea being the Switzerland of Asia. It's so true. It's in a delicate situation that Mr. Bae seemed to be really optimistic about, but in truth, Korea's future can just as much be bad as it can be good. So Korea is Switzerland in the sense that it can serve as a neutral ground for China, North Korea, Japan, Russia, and the U.S. to come together with regards to the North Korea issue - all the other powers have a major interest in NK's type of government, whereas South Korea has declared it is more interested in evolving North Korea and not tackling its regime. On the other hand, it's definitely not as neutral as Switzerland is/was in Europe since it definitely has major interests at stake throughout the 6-Party Talks. The current administration's targeted deadline for Korea's reunification is 2030: good luck with that.

As a side note: I was so impressed by the interpretor who was present at today's lecture. She wrote very brief notes in Korean/English/Chinese so quickly and then very nicely translated what Mr. Bae said almost exactly the way he said so, even though she didn't write down exactly what she said. I was so curious about her education, so I approached her after the talk. She attended a graduate institute program specifically for interpretors, so maybe that's how she became so good with knowing key political English terms. It's impressive she knew some obscure words that weren't political in nature though - like "porcupine" - WHO KNOWS what "porcupine" means after taking a language for several years? I don't know what "porcupine" is in Korean. I was impressed. Her accent was great too, which made me think she had gone to school in the States, but she said she only went to the States for school when she was really young. I was so mesmerized by her skill that I kept watching her during the lecture.

I'm musing on the possibility of maybe pursuing a small part-time job in translating simple books or stories. Nothing too difficult at first, but it could be fun and good practice for my Korean to translate simple Korean books into English. It bugs me to see the wrong translation some Korean TV shows have for their English subtitles. I appreciate the Korean language's intricacies in how many different ways you can say something simple, and I think subtitles should be literal translations as much as possible. Definitely something I'll look into doing when I get back home. I imagine I could easily do it in my free time during the school year even (as long as the deadline is lenient) and send in the manuscript to the publishers.